n between signing up for Wonka and Great Expectations, international treasure Olivia Colman chose to appear in Emer Reynolds’ low-budget Irish road movie. If those projects are limousines, Joyride is more of a chewed-up stunner. Still, Colman and Reynolds’ willingness to go off-road makes the journey worthwhile, at the risk of exaggerating that metaphor.
“Seriously, I can convince anyone of anything.” So says Joy, a scathing lawyer and troubled new mother, before demonstrating her point. En route to Kerry airport in a stolen car, with 13-year-old runaway Mully (Charlie Reid; fantastic), Joy wins over a police officer by pairing a plausible story with a luminous goofy smile and eyes that say, “I I’ve been hurt before, so please be gentle.” Colman has built an Oscar-winning career using the exact same weapons. She has many others at her disposal, but overall her ability to turn into a lost girl is what beats us and she’s on top form here.
Writer Ailbhe Keogan (an Alex Garland mentee) throws in some decent jokes, but mostly it’s the idiosyncrasy of the screenplay—actually the strange chemistry between Mully and Joy—that grabs you. Mully, whose beloved mother is dead and whose father, James, is clumsy and unreliable, has to repeatedly look at Joy’s swollen breasts as she struggles to eat.
Meanwhile, Joy not only jokes that Mully is the baby’s father, but often treats him as a potential life partner. In the deftly disturbing indie drama, The Kindergarten Teacher, Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a seemingly competent professional whose boundary issues take her to a dark place. Likewise, lonely Joy, still bleeding from the slightly premature birth, has a wild need in her voice that, for significant parts of the film, makes anything seem possible.
Speaking of Gyllenhaal, she and Colman proudly probed the ambivalence of mothers in The Lost Daughter. Again, Colman asks us to look sympathetically at a must-I-stay-or-must-go working mom.
You can see what drew her to Reynolds. The latter won an Emmy for her sublime documentary The Farthest, in which NASA scientists tearfully talk about interstellar spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, as parents marveling at their brilliant children. The human need to start families (regardless of blood ties) clearly fascinates the Joyride team, who, by the way, sneak in creeping surreal images, most notably the disembodied baby mascot of a pagan festival.
If only the plot wasn’t farcical. If only Colman’s Irish accent was as good as her acting. If only she didn’t have to sing. Halfway through the film, Joy and Mully loudly sing the theme song to Home and Away. At that moment, a fuse blows through Colman’s brogue, which until then flickered like a shady light bulb. Oh yeah. No pain no gain.
94mins, certificate 15
In cinemas